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The fall of Flash – Web Design technique in extinction
Do you remember those websites back in early 2000s, and how they first landed on your screen? Do you remember Comic Sans, Scrolling Marquees, Hit Counters, Animated GIFs, or “Under construction” pages? If so, you are right on track! I was reminiscing these past days about these…
Well, a lot has changed by now, especially in the creative industry. Technology has advanced; marketing and communication paradigms have changed, bringing along innovation within web design. Therefore, websites have become increasingly exciting, insofar as unconventional features that are primarily designed to serve content to their users.
Some of these features have become trendsetters for many years. Others simply appeared and passed, barely touching the market for a short while. Trends come and go. There will always be a new trend coming along superseding the one in existence. That’s also the case for website designs, although we never know what becomes novelty and groundbreaking. Having all these cool functions to explore, many website owners adapt to whatever trend comes their way. Unfortunately, others are still stuck in the 90s.
Speaking of which, have you surfed various sites lately? Because I have. And I have noticed that while most sites adhere to the latest web design trends, others fail miserably at maintaining an updated design and implementing it properly.
Have you landed on a website with infinite scrolling, but without any function to go right back to the top (except for scrolling endlessly upwards again)? Some websites have features that are the death of them – slow loading pages, missing or hidden navigation menu, and even pushy CTAs that burst right in front of your eyes, cajoling you to subscribe to their never-ending newsletters and freebies. With that being said, I have listed below some previous design trends that should remain buried forever.
FLASH
This is the first trend I recommend that you forget about. Start adopting the new HTML5 or other ways to animate your website. It simply is too outdated. Even if Flash played an important role in the rise of the Internet, it has recently become a bad choice for any modern web design and may have a negative impact on your website search engine optimization (SEO).
Although many websites still use it, there are many reasons why you should drop it.
- Flash does not work on mobiles
If you incorporate Flash into your website, it will be unusable on mobile devices. It might even cause frustration among your audience. Taking into consideration that more than 60% of the Internet traffic is made using mobile phones and tablets, I think you should pay more attention to this aspect.
- Flash is bad for SEO
Flash does not have any URLs for the separate pages and does not allow you to monitor outbound links. Therefore, Flash-based websites don’t provide enough elements for an effective SEO. Besides, they tend to be harder to use. Hence, Google gives lower rankings to those websites.
- Flash must be installed into the browser
Being a proprietary software, Flash has to be installed, as it does not come with the browser by default. Users with a browser without the plugin are prompted to install it. Otherwise it restricts access to the content that heavily relies on it.
- Terrible loading time
As I have mentioned before, Flash-based sites tend to take longer to load. Taking into consideration that Internet users are busier than ever, it’s essential to have a site with load times as short as possible. If visitors have to wait too long, they might be tempted to look elsewhere, hence your competition, for a faster site.
- Serious security flaws
Flash has always been plagued with reported security issues, but the last security flaws which led Firefox to block Flash by default on all websites until the flaws were patched is the final warning. It won’t be long until other browsers do the same thing.
